Matt Lavine

The Washington Post has reported that the movie, Avatar, is attacked for its anti-capitalist message. The irony of this criticism is that it assumes that capitalism is intrinsically exploitave. If Avatar is emblrematic of capitalism, then capitalism is an economic system without any moral base. The basic story in Avatar is that a technologically advanced, militaristic society uses physical force to remove another society’s resources. Since capitalism was conceived as providing the moral advance of precluding the moniopolization of opportunity through favors bestowed by the mosst powerful, then this exploitative version negates the rationale for capitalism.

A far more interesting aspect of Avatar is the underlying ethos of these pro-capitalist critics. The justification of capitalism in America is that it provides the medium through which power and wealth are determined by the most daring and intelligent effort, rather than by the continuing of privilege. Thus capitalism is the only economic system that supports a free and democratic society.

Of greater significance to an introspective consideration of the current state of the American culture is the assumption, accepted so blindly as to gain so little notice, that the exploited natives can succeed only through the leadership of the sympathetic member of the conquerors. The notion that Avatar is nothing more than an guilt-ridden recitation of Euro-American imperialism misses the bigger point, that Avatar not only views the guilt of the imperialist as the only salvation for the conquered. That Americans would only accept a story with this underlying assumption represents both a failure of Avatar as literature and an indictment of American culture.

If the point of Avatar is to utilize new methods of imagining a story, then the story itself is relevant to the movie’s value. Fundamentally, to be of value, a story must seek to present the reader with a character, sufficiently different to broaden the reader’s vision.

Instead, Avatar is a set of pretty computer images distracting from a story rife with literary failings. If the goal of Avatar is to paint a pretty picture to engage viewers for a couple of hours, Avatar’s producers could have saved millions and generated the same prfit margin by using real actors costumed in ways to engage a mass American audience. Try Transformers without the Transformers. Lots of Megan Fox running in a tight shirt. Maybe even running on a beach.